I have been flying drones for about 5 years now. I do it professionally for real estate. I have flown thousands of times. This has never happened so I figured I would share what are likely my mistakes with others, but also ask what I should do in the future should it happen again.
I have MP2 with the Smart Controller. Today I decided to update everything because I finally had some down time. Fly Safe Database, firmware, everything all to the latest versions. I took off and took some standard footage of a house. Conditions were moderately windy, but nothing out of the ordinary. I have had the Mavic and the Controller disconnect their Occusync connection in the past. The drone would enter a hover mode, and I could move towards the drone, relaunch the App, and it has reconnected for me. I also maintained control of the drone while it hovered, even without the Occusync connection. This however was somewhat different.
Today after taking some standard footage I decided to use the Point of Interest feature to get a nice pan of the front of a house. The drone was about 20 seconds into the maneuver at 8.9 mph and recording when suddenly the signal dropped from my controller. It gave me the option to have the drone return to home, or not. This is where I think I made my mistake. I chose not to have it automatically return to home because I could see the drone in the air about 200 feet away from me. I still had control of it with the sticks and as I started to move the sticks I could see it was responding. The problem was that when I declined to return to home the drone kept flying in the Point of Interest pattern.
I spent the next 3-4 minutes fighting the drone to get it to land. Even when I could hover it in a relatively stable pattern, it would not touch down. I was also about 6 feet over concrete and did not want to kill the engines and have it straight drop to the ground, and I could not catch it because if I took my thumb off the throttle for a second it would fully accelerate in a random direction. So me and the drone were engaged in a battle. I had also deactivated its sensors as I was doing some tripod work close to the front of the house. I do this all the time. The problem was, and I might be wrong, but I think in its 'mind' its orientation was constantly changing. But to me it was in the same position. So for instance if it was trying to fly to its left, I had to push it to its right, but after a few seconds of it hovering, this would become useless and it would whip off trying to fly to its 'new left' which was still my right. I had to continuously adjust opposite thrust to keep it steady, and at one point I almost lost it. That is where I kick my leg up because it was about to fly straight into a house but at the last second I found whatever its opposite was and got it to return to me.
So long story short, if you are in one of the smart or automated modes, and it is flying, and you lose the connection but it asks if you want the drone to return home, hit yes? I guess? I don't know what would have happened, but it could not have been worse than what I narrowly avoided today.
Here is a link of the unedited video file from start to finish.
And here is the video I was able to salvage from the footage I did get before this meltdown.
I have MP2 with the Smart Controller. Today I decided to update everything because I finally had some down time. Fly Safe Database, firmware, everything all to the latest versions. I took off and took some standard footage of a house. Conditions were moderately windy, but nothing out of the ordinary. I have had the Mavic and the Controller disconnect their Occusync connection in the past. The drone would enter a hover mode, and I could move towards the drone, relaunch the App, and it has reconnected for me. I also maintained control of the drone while it hovered, even without the Occusync connection. This however was somewhat different.
Today after taking some standard footage I decided to use the Point of Interest feature to get a nice pan of the front of a house. The drone was about 20 seconds into the maneuver at 8.9 mph and recording when suddenly the signal dropped from my controller. It gave me the option to have the drone return to home, or not. This is where I think I made my mistake. I chose not to have it automatically return to home because I could see the drone in the air about 200 feet away from me. I still had control of it with the sticks and as I started to move the sticks I could see it was responding. The problem was that when I declined to return to home the drone kept flying in the Point of Interest pattern.
I spent the next 3-4 minutes fighting the drone to get it to land. Even when I could hover it in a relatively stable pattern, it would not touch down. I was also about 6 feet over concrete and did not want to kill the engines and have it straight drop to the ground, and I could not catch it because if I took my thumb off the throttle for a second it would fully accelerate in a random direction. So me and the drone were engaged in a battle. I had also deactivated its sensors as I was doing some tripod work close to the front of the house. I do this all the time. The problem was, and I might be wrong, but I think in its 'mind' its orientation was constantly changing. But to me it was in the same position. So for instance if it was trying to fly to its left, I had to push it to its right, but after a few seconds of it hovering, this would become useless and it would whip off trying to fly to its 'new left' which was still my right. I had to continuously adjust opposite thrust to keep it steady, and at one point I almost lost it. That is where I kick my leg up because it was about to fly straight into a house but at the last second I found whatever its opposite was and got it to return to me.
So long story short, if you are in one of the smart or automated modes, and it is flying, and you lose the connection but it asks if you want the drone to return home, hit yes? I guess? I don't know what would have happened, but it could not have been worse than what I narrowly avoided today.
Here is a link of the unedited video file from start to finish.
And here is the video I was able to salvage from the footage I did get before this meltdown.
